If you've been reading this blog since its early days, you know I'm a big supporter of the use of virtual worlds and 3D immersive spaces. Although I realize these technologies are not yet mainstream or even well accepted or understood, my experience with them has been tremendously positive. They have quite simply changed my life and career forever. Through using virtual worlds, I've learned skills with computer programs and found information about places and ideas I would have never picked up anywhere else. I've also developed better presentation and delivery skills through interactions in these environments. And most importantly, I've met people I never would have met without entering these spaces. It's been an incredible journey that isn't over yet.
Because of my involvement in all this, I became aware of and decided to participate in 3D Game Lab – a summer class focusing on learning how to use gaming techniques and frameworks to supplement or enhance learning. And this experience has led me to even more information and skills and techniques to help me further develop my career. The class finishes up this weekend. But as with virtual worlds, this experience is not over yet either. All of us who participated can choose to continue on creating our own classes using their software. And after September 1st, we can invite up to 60 people or students to participate in our class. My plan is to start with building a class that will teach drainage, and it will be offered online for free. After the beta period, they are opening up the software for anyone to use to build classes – right now it appears that if classes will be offered for free, the use of the software will be free. I'm hoping to be able to continue creating classes for citizens and for other professionals. When I get closer to launching, I will blog more about the experience.
In the meantime, I'm embedding below a visual summary of my virtual experiences – creating this was one of the assignments in our 3D Game Lab class. And it helped me find out about and learn how to use the Glogster site where anyone can create an educational poster. I can see a lot of uses for people in public works who need to create posters for their department.
